


But First, Coffee

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Flirting, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic, Students
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 20:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Elena hopes she never sees that guy whose coffee she almost-accidentally stole again, but of course he's in the Spanish class she definitely shouldn't be taking.





	But First, Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeeymackelena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeeymackelena/gifts).



Elena’s phone was emitting a tune; one of the generic ones that came pre-downloaded onto the device, a tune she’d quite liked before setting it as her wake-up alarm. At least she hadn’t wasted a perfectly good song from one of her playlists to wake her up.

She was absolutely not a morning person. Or at least not a morning class person, mainly when she’d been up until the early hours of the morning reviewing for art history.

_Because, seriously, who has a test on the second class?_ Elena thought bitterly for the hundredth time,

She lay there for moment longer cursing her art history professor for the test, and herself for signing up for a Spanish class during the first class block of the day.

It wasn’t as though she even needed to learn Spanish, she had thought that an entry level class to fill a requirement would be an easy GPA booster. A necessity if she wanted to attend graduate the year after next, not a necessity if it required her to be out of bed before nine-thirty.

Something hit her in the back of the head; one of her roommate, Daisy’s throw pillows.

“God damn it, Elena, can you turn that shit off? I didn’t get back from Piper’s until three!”

Elena fumbled for her phone, succeeding only in knocking it off her desk onto the laminate floor which only magnified the vibrations and sound.

“Elena!”

“ _Lo siento!_ ” Elena pushed her blankets aside, slid out of bed, picked up her phone and silenced the alarm, and tossed Daisy’s pillow back at her with, maybe more force than really necessary. _Bueno terminemos con esto…_

__________

The morning didn’t get better from there; Elena dropped her phone, keys, and headphones on the three-minute walk to her assigned lecture hall— separately, and nearly caused an accident in the crosswalk.

And the line for the campus cafe was seemingly three miles long. If it didn’t move quickly, she was going to be late for class.

_Worth it._ Elena grumbled to herself, pulling out her phone and settling in for the ten-minute wait. Even scrolling through the news and Instagram did little to wake her up; when it was her turn to order, the request that came out of her mouth was incoherent, and only half in English.

The barista, who Elena recognized from some class or another, she couldn’t remember which one exactly, threw her a sympathetic look.

“Girl, same.”

Elena forced herself to smile. “Yeah, sorry, long night.”

“I got you.” The barista winked and grinned at her as she swiped Elena’s card, apparently not thinking that the long night was because of any studying.

Elena smiled again and thanked her before shuffling off to the side to wait for her drink. The number on her receipt read #96. So when the number was called; she swooped in a grabbed the white paper cup from the counter, muttering a vague thanks as she turned away.

They’d gotten her order wrong; the coffee was creamy, and caramel-flavored, not her customary black coffee with two sugars.

_Fantastic._

“Excuse me!”

Elena turned around and almost walked straight into the tallest person she’d ever seen. Well, maybe not, but he was tall. And muscular. And suddenly she felt way to warm, a little spring coiled in her stomach that hadn’t been there before.

_Està bueno…_

“Sorry, I think you picked up my coffee by mistake. Number ninety-eight?”

_Shit._

It took her a few seconds to process what he said. “No, ninety-six.”

The man frowned and glanced down at his receipt. “Ah, are you sure? Mine says ninety-six too.”

Elena rolled her eyes and brandished the receipt at him. “I can read, dumbass.”

The man glanced at the receipt, rubbing the back of his neck in a supremely awkward gesture, that nonetheless showed off the muscles of his arms. “Uh, that says ninety-eight? Plain black coffee?”

Well, she could apologize and trade, or continue insisting she was right. “Pretty sure I ordered a caramel…” She couldn’t remember the difference between a latte and a macchiato, shit.So, she just turned to leave, she was going to be late anyways if she kept arguing with the hot, annoying boy.

“Latte?” He called after her. “C’mon Rodriguez, it’s not too late to switch.”

Elena turned on her heel. “You know my name, stalker?”

“It’s on the receipt.” The boy said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Elena narrowed her eyes at him before caving. She shoved the cup towards him and took the one from his outstretched hand and turned on her heel before he could say anything else.

“Sorry for the trouble, Yoyo.” He called after her.

__________

 

She ended up making it to the class three minutes early and slid into one of the seven or so open seats scattered around the room. The hall was mostly underclassmen, chattering nervously about the first class, and just overhearing their conversation made her even more tired.

Couldn’t she just have a minute to deal with her humiliation in peace?

When the professor entered, a handful of them called out greetings in the way of clumsy _“holas,” “h-olas,”_ and in the case of one boy; “ _aloha.”_

Elena sank a little deeper into her chair, ignoring whoever sat down beside her.

“Fancy seeing you here, Yoyo.”

Elena sat upright, her stomach sinking slightly at the realization that it was the boy from the cafe. Apparently, the embarrassment was going nowhere anytime soon. Though, she was a little curious about her new nickname.

“Yoyo?” She asked, her curiosity outrunning her desire not to speak to him.

“Well, yeah, you know, you changed directions pretty quickly on the coffee debate.”

“Have you ever even seen a yo-yo?” She demanded. “I should call you a Turtleman for how slowly you think.”

‘Turtleman’ shrugged. “Hey, if the shoe fits. Alphonso Mackenzie.” He was holding out his hand to shake hers. “You can call me Mack if Turtleman is too long.”

“Elena, if Yoyo is to short.” She replied, trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach at the way he smiled at her.

“Nice to meet you, Elena.”

__________

 

Leo and Jemma were in another argument, and that’s what she was getting an earful of over breakfast on a lovely Friday morning. Daisy and Piper nodded along sympathetically, but at least Piper’s eyes were glazed over after ten minutes of Leo’s talking.

Daisy offered advice and comfort, but Elena couldn’t even be bothered to nod; it was their third spat in a week. So instead she focused on the disappointingly watery yogurt with underripe strawberries she had purchased from the cafe. She wasn’t so much eating it as pushing it around the container lazily with her spoon.

She only returned to the conversation when Fitz trailed off, staring up over her shoulder in confusion.

“Can I help you?”

Elena twisted in her chair to see Mack standing behind her bearing two cups of coffee.

“Oh, hey.”

“Coffee?” He grinned and offered her one of the cups.

Out of the corner of her eye, Elena spotted Piper and Daisy elbowing each other rather inconspicuously.

“Is it that fluffy drink you like, because—”

“Just your normal order.”

Elena narrowed her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Nothing! Well, not nothing, I can’t figure out the homework, since you’re fluent, I thought maybe… I could ask you a few questions. Can I sit?”

“I’m free Tuesday night after seven, Daisy and I are up in the Lighthouse, room two-hundred twenty-four.” Elena took the coffee from his hand. “Thanks for the coffee, Turtleman.”

“So I can’t sit?”

“Of course you can,” Daisy said, ignoring Elena’s expression. “Piper and I here were just givingFitz and Elena our best romantic advice.”

“It took you almost three years to get together,” Elena muttered, remembering not-too-fondly all of her roommate’s angst over Piper.

“So we’re experts! What about you, girlfriend? Boyfriend? Maybe you can help us get through to her. Oh, wait is your name really Turtleman?” Piper asked.

Mack looked a little taken aback at her enthusiasm. “No, it’s Mack. And I don’t think I’ll be much help.”

Piper shrugged. “Still, maybe you can help us convince Fitz to calm down a bit.”

“Yeah, if all romance is anything like Fitz and his girlfriend, I don’t want it.” Elena jibed.

“Hey!”

__________

 

Mack knocked on her door at precisely seven on Tuesday evening.

And Daisy launched herself off her bed, scrambling for her shoes and bag. “I’m going to Piper’s.”

“Don’t you have a paper?” Elena asked, making her way to the door at a more slowly.

“It’s not due until midnight tomorrow, I’ll be fine.” Daisy pushed past her, still stomping her foot into her tennis shoe as she threw the door open.

“Hi, Mack,” Daisy said brightly as she pushed past him, starting down the stairs. “Bye, Mack!”

“You didn’t have to kick her out.”

“I didn’t! She just wants the excuse to see Piper.”

They sat side-by-side on her bed among the excessive number of pillows she’d thrown on it. They leaned against the wall, legs dangling off the edge of the bed; his quite a bit more than hers. Papers and notebooks slowly spread across the bed, mixing together and overlapping so that Elena was beginning to vaguely worry that Mack was going to take her homework with him by accident when he left.

On the bright side, Mack wasn’t nearly as bad at Spanish as he let on, but she was having a rather hard time explaining the grammar he didn’t know. It was pretty straightforward, but she was so accustomed to the language that her explanations felt clumsy.

Mack didn’t seem to think so, he was writing so much down she wondered if he were trying to transcribe the conversation.

“Why are you in intermediate Spanish?” He asked as she finished an explanation, he didn’t glance up but his pencil pausing against the paper.

“It’s an easy A. Why do you want to know it?” She leaned away from the wall and a little closer to him.

“General requirement, mostly. But hey, if I keep hanging around you, maybe I’ll pick more of it up” As he glanced up at her, something in his expression told her he intended to do just that.

She must have held the look for a moment too long because he looked away and coughed, very clearly trying to fill the silence of the room.

“So, anyways the preterite indicative…”

__________

 

Elena was utterly absorbed in a class reading, or, rather in trying to force herself to concentrate on homework at such an early hour. The music playing in her headphones was probably a distraction, but without them, the library was just eery. It was deserted, totally silent and still; typical for ten in the morning on a Sunday with midterms still far in the future. And among all the old wood, and old books, the shelves casting shadows everything, the space was creepy.

Elena didn’t do creepy, so she settling for playing music and struggling to focus. So it was no surprise someone was able to sneak up on her.

She jumped as someone set down a white-paper coffee cup beside her book, then pulled out her left earbud.

“Yoyo, you’re incredible, I love you!” It was Mack, and he was brandishing his phone in the other hand. He was also whispering, which was odd considering his level of enthusiasm.

“What?” She spun around in her chair.

“I got my grade for the exam! Ninety-four percent, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”

Elena nodded, simultaneously relieved and strangely disappointed that he wasn’t talking about other stuff. “Ah, well, no problem.”

“Sorry, you’re busy. But, as payment… a coffee.”

She watched him make his way back towards the door, struck by sudden inspiration. “The coffee’s not enough, Mack!” She called after him.

He turned around, brow furrowed as though he could tell it was a joke but couldn’t guess the punchline.

“What if you buy me dinner tonight?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As always comments/feedback are always welcome! 
> 
> -sinara-smith


End file.
